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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24434110">She's an Intensely Private Person</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerumbird/pseuds/littlerumbird'>littlerumbird</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Interstellar Oceans [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: The Next Generation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Imzadi (Star Trek)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:26:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,896</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24434110</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerumbird/pseuds/littlerumbird</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a fic following Will's perspective through the events of episode 2.1 The Child. He's handling it all wrong, and he's painfully aware of it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>William Riker/Deanna Troi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Interstellar Oceans [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026340</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>She's an Intensely Private Person</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to everyone who has read, who left kudos, and who left comments. The comments especially are so encouraging.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Will Riker is sure there’s not an especially delicate way to break the news of an unplanned pregnancy. It’s not in any officer training he received. For a diplomat, later it will occur to him that the captain’s announcement was unceremonious at best. And blunt.</p><p>Will is handling it all wrong, and he’s painfully aware of it before his shipmates are staring at him in surprise. He deserves Deanna’s sharp retort that it’s an even bigger surprise to her.</p><p>One look at her, and he can see how she’s holding herself stiffly. Compressing in any emotion. Constrained and with that stoic mask in place. It’s more than the emotional wall she’s carefully constructed. It occurs to him that she is sitting as far as she can from everyone else while still being in the same room.</p><p>This new ship’s doctor is bring them up to speed with detached professionalism. It’s the biggest pile of nonsensical ideas, and before any more of the words can make their way through his ears and interpret into meaning, there it is on the screen, alive and even more real.</p><p>A very clear growing fetus. Soon to be a baby. Deanna’s name and rank are displayed with Starfleet precision, and Will is struggling to figure out why they are having this conversation at all. Because while she’ll certainly have to rotate off duty in the future, he’s simply wondering how this happened at all.</p><p>There are precautions they all take, and it’s standard. Because while some families live on board, Will hasn’t heard of an unplanned pregnancy on a starship before. Or at least Deanna <em>used</em> to take these precautions, a sinister part of his brain reminds him that it’s not a topic that comes up in their professional discourse. He’s seen her around the ship an in Ten Forward before, but usually with Beverly or Data.</p><p>She’s an intensely private person, but she’s never hidden relationships before.</p><p>“…. We believe conception took place eleven hours ago.”</p><p>“What?” the word is out before he can hope to stop it. It’s reflexive, and certainly nothing like a professional First Officer should be reacting to a colleague. The ephemeral edges of something is starting to fit together, but Will is still trying to wrap his head around the idea that Deanna would… what? Have a relationship with someone else without him knowing? Plan a family?</p><p>She won’t meet his gaze, and Deanna clearly wants to be somewhere else altogether. Her only words have been directed at Will. And were defiant. In any other context it would be disrespect for a superior officer. But this was less like Starfleet rank or decorum and felt as charged as their lover’s quarrels.</p><p>None of it is making sense in his brain. Hours later and weeks older. And thirty six hours more until a baby, and Will can’t control his words today. It has to be asked because there aren’t any explanations, and so he asks for the one answer that he thinks should be the easiest to explain. The father.</p><p>But when she finally starts to talk for herself, she finally looks at him. And she’s talking about her sleep and a presence, and it unsettles all of them. A part of him realizes that it’s not about how they feel—Picard, Data, Worf, himself. Their ship is supposed to be safe. The safety of the crew is first. But at her most vulnerable, asleep, something <em>had</em> happened. And she was struggling to find words or an explanation to encompass it.</p><p>He wants explanations. Rationalization. Because how can anyone on the ship be safe—how can <em>she</em> be safe—if they don’t even know what or who? He’s not saying she should abort, but he wants to know the options. There are supposed to be explanations. Because she has choices, but they have a crew and ship to consider, and there’s Deanna’s health and safety, too. And yet he’s painfully aware that they have a window of time, a fast-closing window thirty six hours. And even that is an estimate for a situation that has already proved wildly unpredictable.</p><p>Leave it to Counselor Deanna Troi of the Fifth House of Betazed to put down her foot. The captain is smart enough to know she’s going to be unyielding on this point. Will wants to argue, but she gives him that look. The one that he knows means there is nothing he can say or do to change her mind.</p><p> </p><p>She carries motherhood well. And Will does his best not to stare. Because she’s striking in the rich blue, and she’s settled into her usual spot on the captain’s left. For all of their shock and how washed out she was the day before, she’s glowing now.</p><p>He doesn’t begrudge her this chance at motherhood. Part of him wants to think he would be more open to it had she been in a relationship. It’s backward and smacks of something he can’t quite name. It’s old-fashioned. A small part of him finally admits that he used to imagine that someday she would look something like this while carrying their child.</p><p>But Deanna has been very busy. In less than a day Geordi helped coordinate her move to family quarters. Data had helped her organize her things. But he had bridge duty, and he has sufficiently put his foot in his mouth so much in one senior staff meeting alone that Will didn’t dare show his face.</p><p> </p><p>He heard Data’s call for the security team to sickbay, and he knew. He knew she was in labor. There were protocols that Worf had already insisted upon. More than once in the meetings between the security chief, and captain, and himself Will had wanted to shake the Klignon for the imagined threats Worf had implied. The captain’s cooler head had prevailed, ultimately scaling it down to a small security team.</p><p>While he was still struggling to warm up to this new doctor, at a time when he knew Deanna would’ve far preferred Beverly Crusher, he was glad when he arrived at maternity to find the steely doctor had insisted security stand aside.</p><p>He should be in there with her.</p><p>It seems calm for a birth. There are quiet assurances from the doctor, but he can hear her effort from the door. He should be holding her hand. Encouraging her. Offering her strength. But he hasn’t been welcomed or asked. And he’s hurt her too much before and been too careless with himself to intrude on this moment. If she’s finding something good in this, he doesn’t want to interfere with these moments of joy.</p><p>The small cry hurts, though. Because he had ideas of what it might have been. If he hadn’t been so arrogant and full of his own ambitions. Will has imagined several ideas of what their children could have been. Taller like him, with her dark hair and curls. Unfathomable dark eyes full of quiet knowing. Maybe one of their children might have loved music like he did. Or inherited some smaller traces of Deanna’s empathic abilities. Or her gift for languages. And a small squeak emerges from that infant as if to highlight these last thoughts. Will wonders.</p><p>As the security detail tucks tail and exits, humbled by the sight of an ordinary baby, there’s her father’s name supplying the answer. He’s moving in now, unable to stop himself. Shifting from orbit to be drawn like gravity to her side.</p><p>And like the sun emerging after a storm, she’s smiling at him. A bigger, more open smile than he’s seen from her in a very long time. His own smile comes readily to greet it. “Were you here all along?”</p><p>He can feel her forgiveness in those five words, and Will’s smile widens as he nods. Because there’s no one whose anger is worse when it’s directed at him than Deanna’s. He’s relieved, too. That it’s a humanoid baby. That she’s safe and made it through the last days, seeming to thrive. That she’s not in pain. And she’s happy. And he has tears in his eyes.</p><p>The words are hard to get out. Because Ian is a beautiful child. And she’s never looked more beautiful to him. And he doesn’t know what to expect next, so he kisses her cheek instead. The depth and fragility of the moment is summed up in a gesture, and he feels the ghost of the connection between them for a long moment. Her understanding and thanks.</p><p> </p><p>The bridge seems emptier without her. He’s never really considered it before. Because she has always been in and out with her responsibilities as counselor. But now she’s on maternity leave. While he’s heard plenty of stories of long labors and partners with hands practically crushed with the tension of a women in labor… well, hers seemed so easy and calm.</p><p>Will wants to check in her, but he has the bridge. They’re in the middle of transfers of delicate cargo. Dangerous cargo.</p><p>And it will have to wait until he’s off duty.</p><p>He’s fully cognizant that Deanna struggles with asking for help. But surely she would trust him to hold Ian for a bit or watch after the boy while she rests because he’s worked with enough new parents to know sleep can be hard to come by. He wants to confer with Dr. Pulaski to see if anyone has talked to her about a nurse to help her at night so she can still get some sleep. Knowing Deanna, she would insist she could handle it. It feels too much like interfering to go directly to the doctor, but maybe he can bring it up to Deanna later.</p><p>But later doesn’t come. Because it doesn’t take gossip long to travel around a ship, even a larger craft like the Enterprise. He hears things he doesn’t like hearing crew say about one of their own. Will is painfully aware that his past relationship, and privately tangled feelings about Deanna, make him more defensive than usual.</p><p>He can’t help but overhear the chilling call to Deanna’s quarters. Not once has he heard her this upset, and it’s worse yet because she’s always the more composed among the crew. They’ve always relied on her to steady them in times of crisis. But she has Ian clutched to her chest as though willing the boy into health. And Will is kicking himself not doing the math sooner. While this is far sooner than they ever could have predicted… had any of them considered that if Ian continued this rate of growth, a heartbreaking end was barreling toward them?</p><p>Will is frozen to the spot. He’s useless here. Nothing he can do medically to help. No solutions he can conjure for a rabbit trick. She’s struggling front of them, and he’s helpless.</p><p>They have an explanation now. It’s logical. Simple. But not harmless because of the toll it has taken on her. She’s silently falling apart, but he’s acutely aware she’s holding herself together for their sake. He wants to stay with her. To comfort her. But she’s not asked. She will grieve privately. And only after they go, and so the only compassionate thing he can do is encourage Data and Pulaski to follow. He hates leaving her to this. Set apart. Just as it began.</p>
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